Page:Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).djvu/93

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ADMISSION CEREMONIES
93

off her bigs, whereby she might have been suspected to have been a witch, and laid plaisters to those places.'[1] 'Another Evidence deposed that she once heard the said Margaret [Landish] say, that her Imps did usually suck two Teats near the privy parts.'[2]

In Huntingdonshire in 1646 John Clarke junior, a labourer, was tried for witchcraft; John Browne, a tailor, deposed that he met Clarke on the road, Clarke 'said he was in haste; for his Father and Mother were accused for Witches, and that hee himselfe had beene searched: and this Informant answered, and so have I. Then Clarke asked this Informant, whether any thing were found about him, or not? he (this Informant) answered, that they said there were marks: Clarke said againe, had you no more wit but to have your marks found? I cut off mine three dayes before I was searched.'[3] John Palmer of St. Albans (1649) confessed that 'upon his compact with the Divel, hee received a flesh brand, or mark, upon his side, which gave suck to two familiars'.[4] There were several cases in Yorkshire: In 1649 'they searched the body of the saide Mary Sikes, and founde upon the side of her seate a redd lumpe about the biggnes of a nutt, being wett, and that, when they wrung it with theire fingers, moisture came out of it like lee. And they founde upon her left side neare her arme a litle lumpe like a wart, and being puld out it stretcht about halfe an inch. And they further say that they never sawe the like upon anie other weomen.'[5] In 1650 Frances Ward 'saith that she was one of the fower that searched Margaret Morton, and found upon her two black spotts between her thigh and her body; they were like a wart, but it was none. And the other was black on both sides, an inch bread, and blew in the middest.'[6] At Scarborough in 1651

'Margery Ffish, widdow, beinge commanded to searche the bodye of Anne Hunnam otherwise Marchant, who was accused for witchcraft; she, this informante, and Elizabeth Jackson,

  1. Howell, iv, 838, 843, 848, 849, 850, 851.
  2. Four Notorious Witches at Worcester, p. 4. The place is wrongly given: it should be Essex, not Worcester.
  3. Davenport, p. 15.
  4. Gerish, The Divel's Delusions, p. 12.
  5. Surtees Soc., xl, p. 30.
  6. Id., xl, p. 38.